Toronto the incredibly stupid

I have trashed Toronto in previous posting and afterward thought that it wasn’t fair to do a blanket condemnation of the city based on the policies and thinking of their Mayor, David Miller. But now I wonder.

The starter’s pistol is under the gun, facing a growing clamour to end its use at local high school track and field meets.

And the movement to ban the gun because of its deadly symbolism includes someone who literally has pulled the trigger to start foot races for thousands of high school athletes across Ontario.

“We don’t need people standing around with (pistols) – those days are done,” said Brian Keaveney, a former teacher and an internationally ranked starter who has his own pistol.

Having guns in and around schools is bad optics, he added.

Keaveney has been joined in the call for the starter gun ban by some officials from the Toronto District School Board and Athletics Ontario, among others.

Political correctness at its finest.

So it looks as though Mayor Miller’s hoplophobia has infected more of the general Toronto populace than previously suspected.

There is some rational argument against this latest Toronto based plan to save their citizens from imagined dangers and indescribable evils.

According to an article today, Toronto District School Board officials have finally had enough of school shootings. In the latest effort to make schools safer, free from the risk of gun violence, the TDSB has decided to get tough, crack down, and finally rid our schools of the scourge of … the starter pistols used at track and field events. Former teachers, coaches, and unnamed school board officials want to see the pistols banned and replaced with new technology over the next few years. No doubt the students feel safer already.

Starter pistols are to real handguns what a table knife is to a machete. They have triggers, this is true, and when those triggers are pulled, there is a loud bang. They vaguely resemble revolvers. By design, they cannot fire live ammunition, being capable only of detonating a blank shell or a even just a cap. The loud crack, easily heard by all, is what sends sprinters racing down their lane. More modern starter pistols include electronic sensors that detect the pull of the trigger, starting the race clock, allowing for extremely accurate timings of competitive events. There are, of course, other ways of announcing the race’s start, such as an electronic buzzer or a sharp blast from a whistle. But that isn’t the point.

I seriously doubt that students are traumatized by the sight and use of starter pistols at track meets, nor do I think it lures them into a life of crime and violence.

But then common sense and logic has never held much currency with those of this ilk.

However if I was a civic voter in Toronto I would be looking closely at whom I was casting my vote for in future elections.

Although this issue seems silly, it is dead serious. This is a mindset that would ban books because of an idea or an image. This is the same type thinking that authorizes a strip search of a 13 year old student, under a zero tolerance drug abuse policy, for suspicion of having ibuprofen on her person. It is a mindset that chooses to demonize objects rather than deal with the real issues. These are the same kind of people who inhabit the various Canadian Human Rights Commissions.

They are smug and arrogant but the real truth is that in the end, if they are given free reign, they are dangerous.

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This entry was posted on May 1, 2009 at 2:48 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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